[ISN] Speculators Inundate InterNIC

From: mea culpa (jerichoat_private)
Date: Sat Jan 30 1999 - 01:07:28 PST

  • Next message: mea culpa: "[ISN] Study Tracks 'Trust' In Web Design"

    http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/explode-infobeat/technology/story/17522.html
    Speculators Inundate InterNIC
    by Chris Oakes 
    3:00 a.m.  26.Jan.99.PST
    
    Network Solutions has beefed up its staff and infrastructure to cope with
    an onslaught of fraudulent name registrations that the company said is
    tying up the service. 
    
    A small number of malicious groups are spamming the Net's primary
    domain-name registrar with phony electronic registration applications. The
    activity is effectively doubling the load on the service and thwarting
    legitimate attempts by would-be registrants to set aside names as new
    Internet addresses. 
    
    The point, apparently, is to prevent a legitimate applicant from receiving
    a name to sell or to use himself. 
    
    "We're dealing with spammers -- we call them speculators -- people trying
    to flood our registration services with either bogus or incomplete or
    other types of email templates that essentially can clog the registration
    system,"  said Chris Clough, vice president of corporate communications
    for Network Solutions (NSOL). 
    
    The attacks are a major tie-up for Network Solutions' InterNIC, or
    Internet Network Information Center, which handles the addressing system.
    Individuals and companies wanting to set aside Internet space make
    reservations at InterNIC an average of 10,000 times a day. The fake
    applications are doubling that number. 
    
    Besides adding more hardware and system support, the company has brought
    on an additional 70 people to work with the registration-processing staff. 
    
    "It's something that's been going on for a long, long time. It's just that
    the volume has increased since the beginning of this year," Clough said. 
    "[It] became something we had to address because it was being noticed by
    would-be registrants." 
    
    The company posted a customer advisory late last week after a surge
    overloaded the system. 
    
    Network Solutions has a monopoly on the registration of the .com, .net,
    and .org. domains. The company is slated to share that duty in April 2000,
    once plans are in place for opening the domain-name business to
    competition. 
    
    [snip...]
    
    -o-
    Subscribe: mail majordomoat_private with "subscribe isn".
    Today's ISN Sponsor: Internet Security Institute [www.isi-sec.com]
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 13:17:38 PDT